I'm sorry, but you're not going to compare the "characters" you mentioned with this:
View attachment 53574
THAT, above, DOESN'T look like a young girl.
And as for Priestly, I have family members who actually worked on the set of
90210 in Tarzana, CA at the time -- they always used to tell me that they were modeling what he looked like on what most clean-cut guys looked like throughout most high schools of America at the time.
I'll give you some of those strange bands we had in the 80s, sure -- I mean, A Flock of Seagulls, Thompson Twins, heck even Duran Duran had that "feminine" look. But I'm focusing more on what television and film stars looked like and what they look like today.
You can throw in the Partridge Family, the Founding Fathers and anyone else you want to with regard to this discussion....a plethora of wigs or curling irons in J. Egdar Hoover's brief case won't change my mind about what I saw in the film (and what I'm seeing in society today).
I'll tell you this: When I was that kid's age in MY school, girls DID NOT look like that. I'm sorry. This "little gem" didn't "bring a tear to my eye" as it did with you, apparently, and the young leads in it didn't "steal my heart." Was it nostalgic and did it fuse a nice connection to the original for even casual fans of the first film? Sure. But I just couldn't help shake my head -- as my wife couldn't, either -- every time these young leads were up on the screen.
To each their own; apparently, this hit a special place for you which it didn't for me (save for the aforementioned synergy it had with elements of the original, which was cool).